Sharing has its upsides, particularly for smaller city governments such as Covington, Maple Valley and Black Diamond.

In recent months all three cities have hammered out agreements to share among themselves in a way they hadn’t before.

The groundwork was laid nine months ago during the annual tri-city council meeting, explained Covington’s Public Works Director Glenn Akramoff.

“The public works directors and parks directors in separate presentations talked about some possible joint projects that we could do together,” Akramoff said. “All three councils were all over it and wanted us to continue on that path.”

But the cities knew they could work together before then, said Richard Hart, Covington’s Community Development Director, after a former Covington employee, Robert Meyers, was able to find consulting work with surrounding cities including Black Diamond.

“They liked his work and they liked what he was doing, so, they contacted us last year and said, ‘Hey, would you like to put together an interlocal agreement where we could share,’” Hart said. “We’ve been in negotiations with Black Diamond… since September or October of last year on this ILA.”

Both councils approved the building services ILA in March.

“That allowed us to supplement their salaries and their hours (for Covington employees),” Hart said. “They liked it so much they’ve asked for even more hours. It’s been working very well. I think it’s a great way to share resources when both communities may not be able to individually. It’s been helpful for both.”

In the meantime, Covington has also been working on ILAs with Black Diamond and Maple Valley to work jointly on public works projects and contracts, Akramoff said.

Covington and Black Diamond city councils approved the agreements in May.

Like the community development department services, negotiations have been under way since the tri-council meeting last fall, Akramoff explained.

“The public works directors got together and talked about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to do first,” Akramoff said. “It became pretty clear that it would make sense to do joint operations in maintenance. So, we started meeting with the finance directors and the attorneys to figure out how we would do it in terms of writing the agreement.”

Akramoff said Black Diamond City Council should see an agreement to vote on in the near future and that “we have an agreement in principle.”

“There are three pieces to (the ILA),” Akramoff said. “One is that any of the cities can ask the other to provide a service for them, then of course the city who gets the request gives them the cost. The second piece, it’s shared contracts where we both contract a service and we want to do it together to get economies of sale and get a better bid. The third one, which we’re preparing to do with Maple Valley as well, would be physically working together on projects or tasks.”

This collaboration, wrote Maple Valley Public Works Director Steve Clark in an email interview, will enable both cities to do a few things such as “achieve cost savings through economies of scale in joint contracting and purchasing, enable each city to do more maintenance by sharing staff and equipment” as well as reduce staff and equipment costs by sharing resources.

“This is a very creative solution maximize service to the tax payer and keeping cost at or below current levels,” Clark wrote.

To start off the collective effort in public works, Covington and Maple Valley joined forces to put a street sweeping contract for both cities out to bid, with the idea being that two cities combined to get a better price.

“In addition Covington and Maple Valley will be working together this summer repairing and patching streets and street shoulder mowing,” Clark wrote. “In the future we may be sharing resources to inspect and repair park play ground equipment, noting the Maple Valley has three certified inspectors.”

Akramoff noted the cities used two other regional models to develop their own interlocal agreements.

One of those — an arrangement between Lake Forest Park and Kenmore — he is quite familiar with as he helped develop it when he worked there.

“Lake Forest Park has all the staff and equipment and they provide all the service for Kenmore,” Akramoff said. “They’ve been doing that for a little more than 10 years.”

There is another “shining star” Akramoff said these ILAs were modeled after called GEM, or Grounds Equipment Maintenance, which helps 32 different Clark County agencies share resources to get projects done.

“They’ve been doing it since 1993, so, they’ve been at it a long time and they’ve learned a lot of lessons,” Akramoff said. “Tis is becoming more and more prevalent in our industry because of the economy… this works well because (public works) is standardized across the industry and there’s nothing controversial or political about fixing a pothole.”

In the long run, the agreements between Covington, Maple Valley and Black Diamond could become models for other cities in the area.

“You may well see other agencies in southeast King County hop on board to be a part of it,” he said. “That’s our hope eventually.”

Ultimately, though, the biggest winners are the residents of the cities.

“The citizenry who use the infrastructure, they don’t care whose responsibility it is… they want it done, and frankly, they’re right,” Akramoff said. “We’re all in the same industry and we can help each other and the more we can do that the better service we can provide.”